In article .com>,
"Sheldon" > wrote:
[snip]
>
>No one here has created any recipes, in fact no one on this planet has
>created a recipe in perhaps 5,000 years, probably a lot longer. The
>one thing every being on this planet has done since there are beings is
>eat... everyone has to eat (well, except Terri)... do you have any idea
>how many beings have passed through this planet throuhgout the
>millenia... ****ING ZILLIONS, and ZILLIONS, and ZILLIONS... they all

Dunno how many in one of your ZILLIONS Sheldon, mate, but the experts
tell me there's been no more than around 12 to maybe 14 billion (US)
of us on the planet, including the 6 or 7 billion alive today. (Got
something to do with the maths of geometric growth I'm told. ;-)

>had to eat and the vast majority had to cook. I can assure everyone,
>there is no one alive today who can create a recipe that hasn't been
>done before in some corner of the planet, zillions of times... the fact
>that they are not written is of no consequence, people have been
>cooking since long before there was writing, and in fact most people
>who cook even today can't write a lick... and that's why recipes cannot
>be copyrighted, they've all been done before.

It certainly seems to be accepted that *recipes* as such can't be
copyrighted, only the written expressions of them. Even if you did
come up with a new recipe (how about my Davidson plum jam on a mealy
muffin fried in whale blubber?) you could only copyright the literary
form in which you express it (which is why I'm keeping it secret 8-).


Cheers, Phred.

--
LID